Special report: How will Norfolk deal with waste now the incinerator has been ditched?

An artist's impression of Cory Wheelabrator's proposed incinerator. The county council has terminated its contract with the company.

Archant

Now the contract to build an incinerator at King’s Lynn has been cancelled, the county council is back to square one over how to deal with Norfolk’s waste.

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Embargoed to 0001 Monday March 24
File photo dated 22/01/09 of a landfill site as banning materials including plastic, food and electronics from landfill could save billions of pounds and create thousands of jobs, a study suggests. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Monday March 24, 2014. Sending five key materials for recycling, re-manufacture and reuse instead of burying them in the ground would prevent £3.8 billion worth of products being lost to the UK economy, the analysis by think tank Green Alliance found. Reusing and recycling wood, textiles, electronics, food and plastics would also support 47,500 jobs in the UK, it claimed. The type of jobs could range from managing an anaerobic digestion plant which creates energy and fertiliser from waste food, to engineering jobs in plastic manufacturing. Diverting the waste and using it to make new products would also cut 14.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year that would be generated if it ended up in landfill, an amount equal to the emissions from 2.7

The council voted on Monday, by 48 votes to 30, to cancel the contract with Cory Wheelabrator to build and run an incinerator at Saddlebow.

That has left taxpayers with a £35m bill, but even more money will need to be spent to find alternative ways of dealing with the county’s waste, with officers set to present cabinet with possible options next month.

Officers, in the report which came before councillors on Monday, stated: “All alternatives would be considered unless the county council changes its position of neutrality on treatment processes.”

So how might the problem of what to do with Norfolk’s waste be solved?

Landfill?

The council could continue to send most of its waste to landfill, either in Norfolk or elsewhere. A county council spokesman said: “The largest landfill in Norfolk at Blackborough End near King’s Lynn has potentially many years capacity and the council has landfill disposal contracts that run until 2016. “The council can use existing facilities elsewhere, including the possibility of agreements with neighbouring authorities.”

Mechanical Biological Treatment/Anaerobic Digestion?

A mechanical biological treatment plant - which would have used a process called anaerobic digestion to turn waste into a form of industrial compost - was almost built in Costessey after a bid to build an incinerator there failed.

But, in 2009, the council’s cabinet cancelled the contract saying it had become too expensive and shifted attention to the proposed incinerator in King’s Lynn.

However, waste industry experts say that the cost of such plants has since come down, so it could now be more affordable.

Officers have stated that using a mechanical biological treatment plant at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire could be an option.

Incineration?

Norfolk County Council has been having talks with Suffolk County Council about sending some of its waste to the incinerator at Great Blakenham, due to start working this summer.

The county council has already been using an incinerator in Kent and council leader George Nobbs has suggested burners in Lincolnshire might be able to take the county’s waste.

UKIP leader Toby Coke also commissioned a report from waste consultancy Eunomia last year looking at an alternative waste treatment bid received by the council.

That report stated the authority could save up to £88m over the life of the contract by sending rubbish to be incinerated in Amsterdam.

As happened when the Costessey scheme was scrapped, the council could yet look to another incinerator, although having been bruised twice now, officers and councillors may think twice.

In the council’s blueprint for how waste developed in Norfolk should be dealt with, a number of sites are deemed suitable for various forms of waste treatment.

A council spokesman said: “Monday’s decision does not in itself affect these site allocations, but of course there is nothing to stop private waste management companies from bringing forward development proposals for any of these sites if they believe that it is a good time to do so.

“They would still require planning permission. The allocations document gives an indication of suitable activities, but detailed applications would still need to be submitted, as at Saddlebow, giving people an opportunity to comment.”

Among them is land at Harling Road in Snetterton, allocated for a range of activities, including anaerobic digestion and energy from waste.

Bosses at Norse have previously said they had applied for that allocation to keep their options open and were not thinking of using the site for incineration.

And the Saddlebow site, which the council paid £2m for, remains available - although it could yet be sold off to help cover costs.

Gasification?

Peterborough-based Green Energy Parks has held meetings with Norfolk County Council officers and says it could treat Norfolk’s waste for £75 per tonne.

The company had competed for the initial Contract A back in 2005, when they came third.

Managing director Chris Williams wrote: “Green Energy Parks is established in Peterborough and we would like to extend our operations to include Norfolk. We are offering a flexible and complete waste solution to take all of Norfolk’s waste for £75 per tonne.

“GEP believes it has a workable solution for Norfolk’s waste, which would be acceptable to local people, while saving money compared to the Willows.”

The company would recycle suitable waste before using a process called gasification to produce electricity.

Officers, in their appendix to Monday’s report to councillors, acknowledge the Peterborough Green Energy Park could be an alternative.

Material Works?

Chester-based Material Works has signed a 16-year framework contract with West Norfolk Council to process around 30,000 tonnes of black bag waste and 5,000 tonnes of food waste per year, as well as 35,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial waste.

The company says it has secured £100m in funding to build an anaerobic digestion plant in West Norfolk, which would turn waste into an inert plastic. But the company has not revealed where the site and has yet to apply for planning permission.

David Harrison, cabinet member for environment and waste previously said he was “very sceptical” about the Material Works scheme which he said was “untested” technology which could take years to be up and running.

But Material Works says a planning application is due to be lodged in the summer, while managing director Robert Billson has previously said the company is also looking to build a demonstrator plant.

A spokesman for Material Works said: “Sites have been identified for the demonstrator plant and for the King’s Lynn plant. We are in discussions with each of the landowners.

“Once these are completed, we will start the consultation process for the King’s Lynn facility with residents and other interested parties that are local to the chosen site as part of the preparation of a Planning Application to be submitted in the summer.”

The company also hopes other councils in Norfolk and further afield will sign up “to maximise the recycling of the residual waste materials they collect.”

Other ideas?

The Green Party wants to see a “zero-waste” policy in Norfolk, which would need to be developed in co-operation with district councils.

The party says that would need a shift away from a single industrial-scale solution, such as an incinerator, towards a mixture of more localised facilities for boosting recycling and reclamation, and mechanical biological solutions while helping householders produce less waste.

Green Party county councillor Andrew Boswell said: “What I think we need now is a reformed team at the council to work on an entirely new approach. Norfolk’s ‘Plan B’ for waste management could offer some imaginative new options that are both environmentally friendly and profitable to local companies.”

Tim East, Liberal Democrat councillor for Costessey, who fought against both incinerators, said the solution was smaller plants around Norfolk - in each district council area.

He said: “This solution would reduce the unnecessary transportation difficulties of one massive single-site plant and cut down on the costs. It would prioritise and localise both waste disposal and collection within a district.

“This idea or concept is predicated on this county improving its recycling rate to about 70pc. This is achievable as other counties and districts have already demonstrated.”

• How do you think Norfolk should deal with its waste? Write, giving full contact details, to Letters Editor, Prospect House, Rouen Road, Norwich NR1 1RE.

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50 comments

Why do ex Cllr. Murphy's humble pie on yesterday evenings Look east not get any debate by the EDP? Are his retractions too uncomfortable for thge editorial line?

I suggest that as West Norfolk had all the answers we delegate responsibility for disposing Norfolk's waste to them and let their tax payers pick up the bill for the excess this is going to cost us.We have had a succession of wishful thinking proposals and disposal systems advocated which are not necessarily as efficient and economical or green as the opponents of the incinerator liked to claim. I hope those affected by ground water contamination from future land fill sites will also lay teh bill at West Norfolk's feet

I still think Daisy Roots real name is Murphy! However, I guess that if NCC wants to pay West Norfolk the same rate as the Cory incinerator was going to cost NCC, then this could be a good deal for West Norfolk. With cheaper options available, they would be free to pursue whatever waste disposal they wished and could make a large profit on the deal. On the back of that they could then substantially reduce their own council tax. Seems like a good deal for West Norfolk to me.

Surprised Borrett is still at the helm of the conmen, even more surprised that Murphy has dared to raise his head and claim to have been pressured by officers! Anyone who has seen Murphy in action will know 100 per cent that no one pressures the big I am. Ask Joe Mooney, John Dobson, Brian Long or Paul Morse! Anyone notice the EDP have not printed 1 letter about all this today I suppose that is that close the book so NCC are allowed to just forget it all.

Daisy, you are boring. People came from far and wide to oppose this incinerator. If you want to talk about NIMBYism what about the councillors who supported this diabolical scheme suddenly worrying they may get the additional traffic en route to alternative facilities. There are better solutions than incineration, gasification etc. Oh and bringing more traffic to the already clogged roads around Lynn was a great idea...and did we forget that the benefits such as power etc was diminished through Palm papers declining to take any steam?

Econic.Just exploring, but what might stop Norfolk CC sellinggiving the site to Cory and then re-awarding the contract to them? I think this is politically unlikely and perhaps now illegal (not sure about this). This all assumes that Pickles eventually gives a green light to pp, which won`t happen.

Leslie Dweck, sorry to burst your bubble, but PREL have nothing except a green field with a couple of horses.
They have a lot of talk, and a loot of front, but have not put a spade in the ground at either Fengate or Sutton Bridge.
There is nothing cutting edge about a green field except the grass mower.
As for a state of the art facility, until something is done about getting it built, it's a mere chimera, an illusion.
There has been lots of talk about their "facilities" over the last 5 to 10 years, but nothing has ever been built and there is no track record of their ability to do so.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious.

It is a state of the art plant that is deploying state of the art technology that is capable of dealing with all waste that comes through its doors safely and in a green way that extracts and recycles all that is of value in the waste as well as the most toxic waste that exists can be dealt with safely on plant and rendered harmless. Absolutely nothing is required to go to landfill. Furthermore state of the art technology is also deployed to ensure what comes of it chimneys are far below EU minimum air quality standards. Any breach of these standards requires the plant to be immediately shut down by LAW. EU minimum air quality standards are amongst the safest in the world if not the safest having been advised by experts in the field whose work is always on going.
Anyone who can in any way fault the standards they have set, should of course be petitioning for these minimum standards to be made even more stringent. Our councils should be independent from such facilities without any conflict of interest. They after all should be the residents watchdogs and insist that each and every industrial chimney is surrounded by relatively cheap air quality monitoring systems that operate 24 hours a day and that immediately notify them of any breach in the minimum air quality and that immediately shuts down the plant in accordance with EU Law.
You can then bet your entire wealth on no plant that is incapable of meeting the stringent EU air quality will ever be built. No one invests in commercial suicide.
So not only the people of Peterborough etc minds can be put at ease but so also the people of Kings Lynn whose desire to dump their waste on others to deal with is very unsavoury. Waste operations like PREL’s are cutting edge and exemplary combining many known and well tested technologies in a versatile and effective way that revolutionises Waste Disposal and should be very much supported by all.
Opinions and comments made out of sheer ignorance and obscene, unwarranted scaremongering are hardly helpfull in reaching responsible and very effective solutions to an every day problem of our making.
Leslie Dweck

Best way forward is for ALL districts to be responsible for both the collection and disposal of waste made by their residents. What was that? West Norfolk are already well down the road with high recycling rates and a scheme which will dispose of it! Of course Gt Yarmouth are trailling behind with recycling at the bottom of their priorities- 26% last time I looked- and a wish to send their cr.ap to anywhere else for disposal. While we are thinking in those terms I think a darn great wall between West Norfolk and all the other districts is an excellent idea, of course that would mean the income NCC currently has from my council tax would stop and be paid to the much more efficient west norfolk council who are leaders in everyway!

Create a huge landfill site in West Norfolk Borough as it's due to their short-sighted nimbyism that we now have a waste disposal problem.
The alternative strategy of sending rubbish to Lincolnshire or South Suffolk is quite ludicrous.

Not a single letter of the many written to the EDP, they could probably fill a whole issue with letters, has been allowed past the editorial baton. NCC is quietly waiting what the public might ask, but not a peeps is heard officially, as not to disturb those who have cost us a lot and think they'd get away with it. Nobody is asking for the police to be called in, but why not?

Canaryboy - The thought of a unitary authority for West Norfolk had crossed my mind too. The rest of rural Norfolk has shown it cannot be trusted to look after our affairs. Perhaps a Metropolitan district of Norwich and West Norfolk would be suitable as that would be broadly reflective of the cosmopolitan and forward-thinking outlook both have.

Andy T. It`s not the smell created by incineration, it`s the dangerous particles within the plume that there has been a particular objection to. That, and increased pollution from traffic that would have taken rubbish to the site. OK, I assume any increased gaseous smell could, with time, also become unbearable.

we are back to the usual censoreship here. Daisy roots, anonymously, is wrong to follow Cllr. Somervilles ignorant comments here and blame the people of west Norfolk, she knows full well that if this project would have been proposed in her neighbourhood, her tune would soon change.

Daisy Roots - Power from Waste is just another fancy name for incineration. Cory Wheelabrator had lots of interesting ways of describing incineration especially when standing outside supermarkets trying to persuade people to adore their technology. I think we should now all listen to Ingo who has been talking for a long time now about treating our waste as a resource and putting it on the other side of the accounts. There is a shortage of plastic waste for recycling, there is a massive shortage of general waste for incinerators pathetically sitting with their beaks open over on the mainland of Europe waiting to be fed and of course it is about time we started mining landfill. You realise that they are even mining the sides of roads for precious metals in some areas? So wakey wakey everyone and look at this as an opportunity. In the meantime lets find out who is to blame for the Contract being signed without planning permission in place. Rookie mistake and done with our money at risk. Someone has to be held responsible

Wonder if Palm will build their own power station? If you can't burn t at Saddlebow then turn the site into landfill. See which smell the locals would prefer.... The incinerator pushes out less pollution than heavy traffic in the City. Now we have to export our waste using up valuable road space and fossil fuels- how do the Greens make that a better solution

Hope all the conservative supporters heard their ture leader speak on radio norfolk this morning. He spoke of massive opposition, no small vocal groups Somerville! no group the size of a hockey team Monson! He also assured listeners that this project will not go ahead!! End of story. Jor.dan, Borrett and co please carry on destroying the Norfolk conservative group it is so full of dishonourable, self centred bigots the county will be a much better place when you are all voted out of power.

Blue Tractor - umm, Blackborough End IS in West Norfolk. Daisy - I assume that you would agree that any money that the county has saved by cancelling the incinerator at King's Lynn, should be assessed in 23 years time (subtract the actual amount spent from the £650,000,000 the incinerator would have cost - I suppose we could include the £30,000,000 compensation payable due to the council's incompetence in the deduction - there will be plenty to spare) and given to West Norfolk?

That's a very intelligent comment Mick. All these other companies offering to take our waste, why? Because they don't have enough for their plants, which is what would have happened here. Also Peterborough are offering to do it at £30 per tonne less than the incinerator!

Already clooged roads -dont make me laugh. The only reason the roads around Lynn are clogged , from East Winch and Middleton to Hardwick is West Norfolks terrible planning decisions. What council in their right minds would have given permission for housing on the opposite side of the A47 to the primary schools or even in villages bang on the A47? What councils would have put major retail and industrial estates in a place where the traffic using the route which accesses them and the town slows down and impedes traffic on two trunk roads? Or put yet another traffic obstruction in the form of a roundabout on the A149 when the QE2 roundabout already causes massive jams? Lynn's traffic problems are Lynn's own doing. And since the hardwick flyover has been built there seems to be little difficulty accessing Saddlebow. I might point out that any waste going to Blackborough End from West Norfolk has to use the hardwick roundabout anyway.

It is of course always total lunacy for councils to sign such contracts and take on all the risks of business's they have no idea about and put themselves in a position that could be at serious odds with their electorate.
Utter folly when relying on others to build it especially when the others have little credible know how and are in effect proposing the most primitive of plants at a budget precisely because of its primitive nature.
What leads council's to such decisions is usually grossly unsavoury and needs very fully to be investigated.
It is particularly upsetting when offers that did not require the council to take any risk or enter into a business they have absolutely no real knowledge of were also on the table.
I note Prel is offering to deal with the waste at £75 per ton in their state of the art facilities in Peterborough that can deal with all waste even the most toxic safely and without any landfill whatsoever with all waste dealt with at the plant, recycled and or turned into electricity.
What on earth drove the council to enter into deals that could put them in conflict with their residents, in a business they had no notion of when far better expertise was available as well as risk free and conflict free offers on the table.
I very much suspect a very full and thorough investigation would most likely reveal criminal conduct that would justifiably lead to the contract being declared null and void. It is totally ludicrous that anyone should be compensated for this fiasco and deceit. High time your local press got off their complacent backsides and did some very serious investigation as well as the police if they are not already on the case.
If indeed it was necessary to have the council as the principal in a waste disposal plant then that should have been done with experts in dealing with waste in a safe and green way by companies such as PREL and the cutting edge plants and technology they deploy.
I would also very strongly criticise those who are opposed to such plants in principle (even the most technologically advanced, safe and green plants) simply for NIMBY reasons expecting others to deal with all your waste. It is high time we all acted like sane adult individuals dealing with the problems we generate in our own back yards and not dump it on others. Indeed we should be taking the lead in encouraging the modern green safe technologies and approaches for dealing with waste in our backyards.
The EU set minimum air quality standards that I understand are amongst the toughest in the world if not the toughest. 24 hour detection of air quality is very simple and relatively in expensive that could force any chimney exceeding these minimum air quality standards to shut down immediately as is required by EU rules. All councils should insist this "automated 24 Hour monitoring is in place araound all chimneys and any new proposed chimney. Those who have reason to believe the EU standards are still not good enough and still present a more minor health hazard should of course petition for higher standards. (I personally believe the EU experts in this field have done a good job of setting standards that protect human health, but I am all for even higher standards being impossed to be even more sure. But there comes a time when it is simply unreasonable to expect these standards to be made more safe when they are clearly at safe levels.)
It is the efficient and automated enforcement of the EU standards that must be in polace for residents to have confidence in these.
No one building such very expensive plants can jeopardise their whole investment unless absolutely sure their plant will meet the minimum EU air quality standards and thereby be safe to human health.
The key is in the monitoring and enforcement of air quality standards not in the prevention of the deployment of state of the art Green facilities.
Leslie Dweck

The problem with the scenario put forward by BernardJuby is that merchant facilities already exist with permission but can not gain finance for want of base load contracts. Commercial waste will follow the market all the way to the bottom, that is why so much commercial waste is being prepared for export as RDF by FCC at Costessey. As better cost options arise the commercial waste will follow, There is no certainty in the commercial waste market a truly cut throat business.

Firstly value all waste as a resource and follow the waste hierarchy if it really is what Government believe in and are committed to. Then responsibly manage all types of waste which Norfolk as Strategic Planning Authority is required to do, and also have the capacity for dealing with it properly. How can Green Energy quote £75 a tonne when Landfill Tax is £80 a tonne ,at least, till 2020. And are there no gate fees in Peterborough of £20 to £50 a tonne?
What if Waterbeach has another catastrophic failure and shuts down again,all their waste had to go to landfill during their closure! There are no easy answers,good luck to the Officers with Plans C.D,E and F and getting treatment accepted in 34 new sites. passing the buck and farming it out to Peterborough, Suffolk. Cambs or Amsterdam is not following the proximity .principle of treatment as near to source as sustainable.

So, let's get this right.
NCC are cancelling their contract with Cory Wheelabrator and have to go and find another means for disposing of our residual waste.
But, as far as Eric Pickles and Cory Wheelabrator are concerned, there is still an outstanding Planning Application, which NCC have approved (just before DCLG called it in). Last Year the DCLG held a Public Enquiry on the Planning Application and have still yet to decide on this issue.
So if Eric Pickles grants Planning Consent, Cory Wheelabrator, who are a privately owned business, and have applied for Planning Consent themselves, apparently (you might think otherwise) completely independently and without NCC involvement other than as Planning Authority, may still get planning consent to build their Incinerator.
If this consent is given, there is nothing to stop Cory Wheelabrator going back to NCC and say "...... 'ere, ..... tell you what NCC, we have got planning consent from Eric Pickles to build an incinerator at King's Lynn, and, er, we understand you've got some waste you want to get rid of ...... wanna do a deal?"
Or, an even scarier thought is that they may get their consent and just go ahead and build it as a merchant facility, open to receive waste from anywhere that is willing to pay the gate fee, which could probably include waste from London, where Cory already have significant waste related interests.
King's Lynn is only a couple of hours away by train. One train a week with, lets say, 5,000 tonnes of waste on it for 52 weeks a year is about 260,000 tonnes a year - nearly the capacity of the proposed Incinerator. Well well well.
Of course, you might point out that NCC own the site, but with no waste project in site, they always did say that the site would still have a commercial value even if their proposed "Contract B" never materialised. I seem to recall from somewhere that they paid about £5M for the site some years ago. As NCC are about to give Cory-Wheelabrator around £30M or so in compensation, perhaps the administration could "do a deal" and turn a quick buck at the same time by just accepting the transfer of the site to C-W, making the overall NCC involvement with the failed project a profitable venture. what's not to like. NCC make a virtual profit on the sale of the land, Cory Wheelabrator get their site, King's Lynn gets its Incinerator after all and we can all choke on the fumes from London's waste (or from somewhere else anyway) and I am sure that the emissions from London waste, which is no doubt dirtier and more contaminated, is far worse that Norfolk waste which is bound to be cleaner and more agricultural.
It 'aint over until the fat man sings.

We should ALL remain vigilant. I do not trust the people involved with this project. There may be alternative routes that could be tried, but I`m no legal expert. Am still recovering from listening to Derrick Murphy on Look East last night. It`s unbelievable. Why do I still have these feelings?

Ingo I blame in this order-NCC for proposing an incinerator rather than a power from waste plant and negotiating a really bad deal, then the West Norfolk campaigners who ran a distorted campaign and may not have been open about their motives and West Norfolk politicians. I also blame NCC for not having the nerve to counter a distorted and in part irrelevant public consultation with a county wide poll of the people actually paying for this. But most of all I blame the so called Green campaigners for ignoring the truth about what can happen to recycling schemes, their known shortcomings, the simple fact that waste becomes SEP or OOSOOM in some commercial recycling arrangements.

In case you weren`t already aware, Blue Tractor, there is already a huge landfill site in West Norfolk and that will almost certainly continue to be utilised in the near to medium future, whatever scheme is devised to sensibly deal with waste.
I think you know who has changed names again.

Will we now at last hear the rest of Norfolk waking up to the fact that West Norfolk has lumbered us with a big bill? Like I said, watch out any area which cannot mobilise the opposition Lynn whipped up-because of the geography of the district council areas or the demography of the area- and see them get lumbered with a relocation deal and the people of the Lynn anti campaign will not roll out their moral high ground arguments in opposition. Plain and simple NIMBY and Daubney playing a slick politician's game

Dwick has missed the point. We don't want a "state of the art" bonfire burning "absolutely everything". We want most of our rubbish recycled. As for your naïve announcement that nothing goes to landfill. Where exactly do you think the toxic ash ends up? It is made into low grade cement like products which are sent to landfill in a very short space of time because the are so substandard and degenerate rapidly. I also find your remark about "dumping waste" on others beyond hilarious. So you think that incinerators are beyond wonderful and the answer to all our woes yet those who have suggested sending waste to under utilised incinerators already up and running are unsavoury. Make up your mind. It's all over the place. The biggest argument against this ridiculous incinerator has always been financial. It was a hugely expensive vanity project and a closer look at incinerators throughout Europe discovered that they are all working vastly under capacity to the point where there are power cuts in some towns in Sweden where they very stupidly rely on an incinerator and the rubbish they import from Eastern Europe to keep it functioning. Even the Suffolk incinerator which has only been around five minutes is offering Norfolk capacity which shows only one thing. It is already under capacity. What does that say for its future?

Maybe the dear Leader would like to offer some help with a Stiff broom at NCC, as amplified by Canary boy. Thanks for explaining the intrecacies of Norfolks need for resource recovery to L. Dweck, alecto, we can not be talking about household resources alone, landfill has to be dealt with and there are methods that can turn old waste into useful and versatile gas, compost, plasmaroc and metals. Has L.Dweck mentioned any job numbers of this PREL idea trying to jump of the drawing board, and what plan for the three horses in all of this?

Democrat. It was suggested that if Eric Pickes does give planning permission county will give CW the KL site and CW will build the incinerator just as a commercial incinerator. This type of facility is known as a merchant plant. The error in the post which I responded to was that this type of facility is financially viable. They are not, merchant plants already have planning permission but no funding. Incinerators need the big blocks of domestic rubbish on long term contracts to make them attractive to the banks. They can not have a strong financial case based on waste from shops and factories alone as the waste collection companies always seek the very cheapest disposal routes and will not have long term contracts tying them in to price and tonnages.
On the issue of 3 smaller incinerators this is also not viable as small mass burn incinerators have higher costs for each tonne of waste burnt so not economic. Additionally NCC does not have 3 x 80,000 tonnes of waste only projecting between 140,000 and 170,000 max.

And how Biker boy do you reconcile that with fundamental opposition to incineration? You are merely confirming that West Norfolks opposition was collective NIMBYism -unless they also oppose incinerating waste elsewhere. We could have taken Cambs and Lincs waste for our system. Which should have been a power station.

Daisy Roots, shall we compare orders of blame? 1. NCC officials for selecting incineration, and all those who allowed it to progress, McNeill, White etc, knowing it had been strongly opposed at Costessey and removed from the waste strategy 2. Derrick Murphy. 3. Dr Palm. 4. Defra Official, Neil Thornton. 5. Cabinet. 6. Cabinet Scrutiny. 7. The vast majority of councillors who remained silent. 8. The Leaders of the Councils who wrote to Caroline Spelman without authority, to pretend there was consensus of support. Had they not done that the PFI would not have been awarded and Cabinet could not have approved the contract being signed. End of. Call the people of West Norfolk NIMBYS if you want, we all know there would have been opposition wherever it was sited. Perhaps if Yarmouth increased their recycling in line with even the poor rates of the rest of the councils, and stopped coming out with excuses by blaming foreigners, disposal costs for the county would be much lower. A lot of your comments on issues other than the incinerator are intelligent, but where the incinerator is concerned I’m surprised you don’t get lonely up there on the moral high ground.

I was thinking along those those lines as well Bernard. We need to be vigilant, unless a sensible poster on here (not D or any of his aliases) assures me otherwise. I`m sure the County Council mentioned the private side possibly taking over in a statement somewhere or another. Mind you, Eric has it all in hand. His weight is often a source of mirth but I`m sure he is well versed in the art of politics.

Micro Breweries and Micro Incinerators....so you can buy an off the shelf incinerator for £3600 inc vat that will burn 1200kg of rubbish a day....about what 2500 people produce a day. Upscaling slightly, a 12 tonne a day incinerator should cost about £36,000 all in. At a gate cost of say £50 per tonne it would generate an income of £600 per day, so enough to pay the workers to shovel in 12 tonne per hour. So this incinerator would process about 4400 tonnes per year. Norfolk would need about 40 of these 4400 tonne incinerators, which should cost less than 1.5 million £s. Haven't factored in how much pollution they would produce, but there again when you are saving money you have to put things like that into perspective.

Interesting to see the comment in the article attributed to Chris Williams at Green Energy Parks, Peterborough. I thought this scheme had disappeared. I went past their site a few weeks ago, near the back of the Peterborough power station. At the moment it is just a green field with a couple of horses on it. Hardly an operational waste facility.
How on earth does he propose to extend their operations to include Norfolk when there is nothing there.
As to offering a flexible and complete waste solution to take all of Norfolk’s waste using a workable solution acceptable to local people of Peterborough. How and with what?
As regards to saving money compared to the Willows site, how much is it going to cost to transport it to Peterborough before the £75tonne is payable at the gate?
I read too that he says they use a process called "gasification" to produce electricity. By my reckoning, that's just Incineration by another word.
You burn the waste, get heat to make steam from water, put it through a turbine connected to a generator. It burns waste, it's an Incinerator. Do the good people of Eye, Southern Peterborough and Whittlesey have any view on this?

Create a huge landfill site in West Norfolk Borough as it's due to their short-sighted nimbyism that we now have a waste disposal problem.
The alternative strategy of sending rubbish to Lincolnshire or South Suffolk is quite ludicrous.